United Notes

*Following up on our report from the other day that, despite being the reigning champion, D.C. United will have to qualify for the U.S. Open Cup.....

The club's prelim game against Dallas has been finalized: Wed., April 22, 7:30 p.m., RFK Stadium. (It is part of the season ticket package.) The survivor will play another prelim game in May against the San Jose-New York winner. The top six MLS teams from the 2008 regular season (Columbus, Houston, Chicago, New England, Chivas USA and Kansas City) are automatically entered in the tournament and two others will join them through the qualifying process. As usual, those eight will have byes until the round of 16.

*Midfielder Rod Dyachenko, let go by United this offseason, has resurfaced in Minnesota with the USL1's Thunder. He joins another former DCU player in the Twin Cities, Quavas Kirk, who signed a few weeks ago. Rich Costanzo, who started at right back for NCAA champion Maryland, will also play for the Thunder.

DCU doesn't deserve a pass for not making the playoffs, but it seems like the Open Cup is providing some perverse incentives. Blow off the Open Cup in favor of the Supporter's Shield and MLS Cup and you get rewarded with byes. Sacrifice your team and play hard to win the Open Cup, possibly costing your team a playoff spot, and your prize is an even tougher path next year. People can complain about the lack of MLS commitment to the Open Cup, but their own qualification rules are partly responsible.

Also, someone on the previous post made the point that the World Cup and other major tournaments don't give reigning champions exemptions but 1) the World Cup does give exemptions to the host and 2) the Open Cup DOES give exemptions, just to the wrong teams.

DCU doesn't deserve a pass for not making the playoffs, but it seems like the Open Cup is providing some perverse incentives. Blow off the Open Cup in favor of the Supporter's Shield and MLS Cup and you get rewarded with byes. Sacrifice your team and play hard to win the Open Cup, possibly costing your team a playoff spot, and your prize is an even tougher path next year. People can complain about the lack of MLS commitment to the Open Cup, but their own qualification rules are partly responsible.

Posted by: distriteno | February 25, 2009 12:24 PM

------------------------------------------

Straw man.

Over the past eight years, only three USOC finalists have failed to qualify for the playoffs in the same season.

Francis Doe was born on Christmas. Christian Gomez is only ten months younger than Jaime Moreno. Mike Zaher and Andrew Jacobsen were born on consecutive days in 1985. No DC United roster players were born in March.

When are they going to make the Open Cup not suck? They need to stop having stupid rules like the champion not qualifying. I think MLS teams enter too late in the competition regardless. Why have MLS teams play each other in order to qualify for the tournement? Why not enter with the USL teams? Makes no sense to me.

Also why do they play at "stadiums" that no one has ever heard of and neither team plays at. It seems like they are actively trying to make the Open Cup pointless and stupid.

Now that the winner qualifies for the Concacaf champions league there is some incentive to win the tournament I guess. But there is no prize money like with Superliga. What's the point of Superliage anyway with the Chamions league? Both competitions are US vs Mexico and finally Mexico vs Mexico because their teams are better than ours.

Minnesota is joining Vancouver in terms of being the frequent home of ex-DCU players as Kirk and Dyachenko go north to the Thunder to join deRoux. Vancouver had the most DCU players last year - Nolly, Moose, Addlery - but now Addlery plays for Puerto Rico. I wonder if DCU will get a discount on Platter (if he is to sign with DCU) with DCU serving up all of those players for the Thunder.

There is a prize, $100,000.00 and a spot in CCL. The stadiums they play in are determined by the home team. DC was at the soccerplex for 2 games because of work going on at RFK I think. Also, there is a bidding process for getting to be the home team, if you pay for it you get to be the home team. Only 8 representatives are allowed in from all participating entities, USL-1, USL-2, USASA all start at the same time, MLS comes in at the 3rd round I beleive, just like BPL does with the FA Cup. And NE won Superliga.

3) DC United, the FO and players, and virtually all its fans, consider last season to be a disaster despite having won the USOC.

4) Because of last season, Tommy Soehn (and, I would speculate, Dave Kasper) and is on the hot seat.

Conclusion based on these facts:

The USOC does not mean a hill of beans. Send the reserves out to play in USOC games and use the matches to evaluate individual performances, use them for conditioning/minutes, and consider the match results as what they are -- meaningless.

Bighungry, saying that Mexican teams have a doiminant record against MLS is totally different than saying they've dominated Superliga.

The SUM tournament has only existed for 2 years and of the four finalists 3 have been MLS teams (Pachuca needing penalties to beat LA in '07). Just becuase DCU blew chunks in Superliga '08 doesn't mean that the Mexican teams have dominated the tournament.

Dad -- How often do we have to go over this? Lampard didn't touch the ball, didn't get in the way of any defender. All he did was almost get in Drogba's way. It doesn't matter whether Lampard was or was not in an offside position. There was no foul.

That's hardly a straw man. That's almost one-quarter of the USOC finalists. Don't know how many of them won the Cup, but it suggests that this is not an isolated event or potentiality.

Posted by: fischy | February 25, 2009 2:28 PM

---------------------------------------

It's less than 20 percent. If teams have done something more than 80 percent of the time, I would hardly say that there is a direct correlation between Open Cup success and failure to make the playoffs/compete for the Supporter's Shield.

Just because DC accomplished one last year and not the other does not mean that it is a trend. You can't extrapolate DC's shortcomings last year into a league-wide scenario.